re: Deep Water Horizon Questions

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I am asking out of ignorance-what could have been done? I only ask because the blind shear ram activated and it still happened.

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They could have paid attention to the alarms telling them the mud pits were gaining. What I've been shown, they were offloading mud and they assumed the alarms were going off due to volumes changing from offloading that mud. But when you look at the charts, you can see the volume gains in the pits between all the offloading activity. They just weren't paying attention. Hell, at that point, they could have shut the bag around the pipe and had well control before they lost too much mud hydrostatic. But even if the needed to shear, they'd have had enough time to get proper shearable pipe across the BSRs. Instead, they didn't pay attention until the well was blowing out. This is all hindsight, but I've sat in safety meetings where they showed how a huge disaster was caused by some pretty easy misses.